News

NEK Broadband has been awarded a $16 million grant by the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) to expand fiber access to 10 new Vermont communities. It’s among the earliest of what is likely to be a flurry of activity by the mostly-newly created Communications Union Districts - partnerships between rural cities and towns - which have formed over the last few years to solve the connectivity crisis for the tens of thousands of Vermonters who have been left behind by the current broadband marketplace.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) is a national nonprofit working to reverse today’s extreme levels of corporate concentration and advance policies to rebuild the economic capacity of local communities. We use in-depth research, reporting, and data analysis to produce influential reports and articles.

Sometimes we come across a fun bit of Internet history that we think is worth highlighting. In this case, Travis Carter, co-host of our Connect This! show, sent this fun and informative history of dial-up broadband over our way and we thought some of you would want to watch it in its entirety.

For more than a year and a half, the nation’s top telecommunications regulator has been stuck in limbo, thanks to a combination of federal dysfunction and industry lobbying. Now the nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC is facing a full frontal assault by telecom monopolies dedicated to preventing the agency from standing up to monopoly power.

Breaking new ground in New York, state leaders are launching the first municipal fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) projects in the Empire State with funds from its new ConnectALL Initiative. Four small rural communities in four different counties will be the beneficiaries of New York’s initial foray into municipal broadband. At the end of May, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office announced the $10 million grant award, which will fund fiber deployments to the Village of Sherburne in Chenango County, the Town of Nichols in Tioga County, the Town of Diana in Lewis County, and the Town of Pitcairn in St. Lawrence County.

In March, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance held a livestream event on the range of challenges and tools available to communities to accomplish infrastructure, equity, and inclusion goals.

With so much attention on how the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Act is continuing to unfold (including from us), it’s important to remember that the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) is still in the process of authorizing bids from its $9.2 billion auction conducted in December of 2020. Today we’re releasing a new resource we hope will be helpful in keeping tabs on which providers have gotten money, how much has been authorized, and in which states.

It’s been nine months since we launched our Big List of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Community Broadband Projects, tracking what communities are doing with the various pots of federal money intended to go towards solving local broadband challenges. Since then, we’ve recorded 250 community projects and 27 states which have announced significant broadband grant programs or disbursement for new infrastructure projects. Here we highlight some of the community projects we’re really excited about, including those that have decided to build their own networks and those building on existing projects, as well as those using ARPA dollars for open access networks, affordable connectivity, or Internet access for students. We also discuss some examples of solutions we believe are less permanent, forward-thinking, or likely to result in long-term success, including the distribution of hotspots and the allocation of funds to monopoly providers. 

This morning, the Department of Treasury announced the first round of Capital Projects Fund (CPF) awards to states putting together portfolios to deploy new infrastructure to unserved households.

Join us live on Thursday, June 9, at 5pm ET in the chat for the latest episode of the Connect This! Show.

The BEAD Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) released by NTIA is packed with guidance and regulations for how tens of billions in new funding with be spent. Reading the rules closely gives us a sense of who they might advantage, at least early on, and the line NTIA is trying to walk in giving the money the most bang for its buck while also heading off abuse. 

With a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) boom sweeping across the nation as communities look to build or expand access to ubiquitous, reliable, high-speed Internet infrastructure, Fiber Connect 2022 is poised to bring together leading network operators well versed in a multitude of technologies, local government and public sector leaders, network builders, and an assortment leading industry experts later this month. Coming on the heels of last year’s gathering – the largest Fiber Connect conference to date – this year’s event will return to Nashville from June 12 – 15.

Join us today, June 2, at 5pm ET in the chat for the latest episode of the Connect This! Show. Co-hosts Christopher Mitchell (ILSR) and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) are joined by regular guests Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) and Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting). 

After years of discussing the possibility of building a city-wide municipal broadband network in the face of resistance from the city manager, the city of Cambridge, Boston’s next-door neighbor, is now getting serious about moving forward.

In an announcement at the Mountain Connect conference last week in Keystone, Colorado, municipally owned open-access network operator UTOPIA Fiber announced it has completed its build in West Valley City, Utah. It marks a major milestone, both for residents in the city (who have worked for years to take back control of their information infrastructure) and for the network as a whole (finishing work on one of the original partner cities in the project itself). 

As communities across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are at various planning stages in laying the groundwork to build their own municipal broadband networks, a rural Bay State town about 50 miles west of Boston has moved past the planning phase and is now offering municipal fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service. In Sterling (est. pop. 8,000) – the town that lays claim to Mary Sawyer Tyler, the real life woman said to have inspired the “Mary Had a Little Lamb” poem – the town’s municipal utility is building out its aptly named Local Area Municipal Broadband (LAMB) network.

Mountain Connect 2022 got a big kick off this morning in Keystone, Colorado with a Q&A discussion between National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Assistant Secretary Alan Davidson and

There's no argument that the ACP offers relief to households that need it most. But is it a long-term solution? Our analysis shows that even if only a third of eligible households ultimately enroll, absent additional allocation the fund will be exhausted by November 2024. But even under the best-case scenario, with the benefit reaching as many people as possible, current enrollment rates show that only 68 percent of eligible households would be able to sign up before the funds run out. In this model, the money will be exhausted just 18 months from now, in January 2024.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance's (NDIA) expanded National Digital Navigator Corps is running its first round of awards, and will support new projects at 18 sites around the country (including six in Tribal communities) beginning in the second half of this year. 

On this special emergency episode of Connect This!, our hosts Christopher Mitchell (ILSR) and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) are joined by regular guests Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) and Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting). The four will be breaking down the BEAD NOFO (Notice of Funding Opportunity).